Ghost Writer(2)

Franchot pulled my attention back. Now that he put the image of Gilligan’s Island in my head, I knew I’d have a hard time calling him Skipper. “And you are Dr. Leland’s assistant, Jen Kirby.”

That's when Dora dropped the bomb. “No, Skipper. Jen is the documentary's onsite writer and interviewer. She has helped me on other projects before, but in this enterprise, she only answers to the documentary’s executive producer.”

“And to me, ladies. At sea, the captain is the final word.”



“You could have warned me.”

We were sharing a compact cabin. I had been in larger closets. Shoe-horned into the space were two bunks, two desks, two narrow chests of drawers and a shared wardrobe, all built in, plus two stools that fit under the desks. It was clean, cleverly organized, and intensely claustrophobic. I tried not to think about that.

“I won't be expected to go in front of the camera, will I?”

She shrugged. “Maybe, who knows what the executive producers might require of you.”

Dora was one of the executive producers, the only one onboard.

“I packed for a field trip, not a video appearance.”

She rifled through my khaki cargo pants, black yoga pants, and earth-tone t-shirts and sweaters. “Works for Michael Palin.”

“I'm not Michael Palin. No disrespect to your friend, but I don’t want to look like him on camera.”

“I don’t think anyone would confuse you.”

I’d never met the man. My image of him was at least a decade out of date and conflated with his Monty Python days. So, my immediate thought was, true, I’ve never dressed like a middle-aged housewife. Also, he was lanky. I was curvy. He had a tanned and weathered face, and I had the paleness natural to people who spend most of their time in front of a computer.

On the other hand, if John Cleese had a sex change, he'd look just like Dora Leland. She was long and gangly, with salt and pepper gray hair which she wore short enough that, after a shower, her hair was dry before she was fully dressed. Her eyes were equally good at twinkling and glaring. When she laughed, it was a whole-body exercise. And she never minded being in front of a camera.

“So?” Dora prompted after my long silence.

“Fine.”

Dora rewarded me with a hearty slap on the shoulders. “Excellent!”



We set sail at 0500 hours. Barely able to stay awake, I lay down for a nap before dinner and didn’t wake up until Dora shook me awake at half past four. So I met the team for first time on deck.

Dora introduced me. I received a chorus of “Hi, Jen,” “Hello,” and “Yo.” I wasn’t totally unknown to them, as we had communicated via email, so I didn’t take offence when they immediately went back to watching our progress leaving dock. Only Dora’s research assistants, a pair of grad students in search of career direction, stayed close. Since she had chosen them because they were already a couple, they were more interested in each other than in me. And that was fine. Being the centre of attention wasn’t my thing.

I soon discovered how different sailing on a ship crewed by professionals was from being capsized multiple times in the kind of boat you'd let preteens sail on their own. The others gradually left to have breakfast, leaving me to watch the harbour shrink into the seascape. Finally the need for coffee overcame my mesmerisation. I tore myself away and got as far as the door to the wardroom when the smells drove me back to the deck.

Great, I told myself. You are about to spend the entire summer at sea and now you discover you get seasick.

White knuckled, I gripped the rail and tried to force my stomach to behave. We reached an accord. As long as I was willing to stand still and stare out over the waves, my tummy was willing to stop torturing me.





Chapter Three ~ Sea Legs



“Penny for your thoughts.”

Startled, I turned and nearly bumped into a big man I could have sworn wasn’t there a moment ago. Then I bumped into the rail as I tried to back up. Obviously part of the crew, the guy wore a black watch cap, black turtleneck, and a black windbreaker with the ship’s logo on one side and an embroidered name badge on the other. According to the tag, he was JL GRAVELL FM.

He handed me an embroidered name badge: G JEN KIRBY. It had a Velcro back that mated with the strip on the bright orange windbreakers provided to the team. I attached it, a bit askew.

Gravell stripped it off and put it back straight. “Wear it anytime you're on deck, okay?”

“Okay,” I agreed, backing up a step to recover my personal space. He reminded me of my mother’s expression ‘built like a brick outhouse.’ I’m not sure what she meant, but for me it conjured up the image of someone thick and immovable. In contrast his voice made me think of dark, Swiss chocolate—Swiss because of the slight, hard to place accent.

“What does the ‘G’ stand for?”

“Genevieve. What does the J.L. stand for?”

“Jean Luc Please-don’t-call-me-Picard. You can call me Chief or Chief Gravell. That’s how the crew addresses me.”

I would never use the Picard joke. Too obvious. I might indulge in ‘Sorry about that, Chief’ if given the opportunity. “What are you chief of?” I asked.

“The crew, cargo, and passengers. If the captain of a ship is god, I’m his archangel.”