Two married couples in my state room. The Kippersons from a suburb of Minneapolis. The Borths from Tempe, AZ.

Pam Kipperson’s crying up a storm while her husband Roger paces, the ice pack on his nose red with his blood. Terri Borth is crying harder than Pam. Dewey Borth has his back to us all. He’s looking out the window, his eyes on the horizon.

“You’re all adults,” I tell them. “You made an agreement.”

“Well he broke that agreement when he barged in and put his fist in my nose,” Roger Kipperson barks, jabbing a thumb in the direction of Dewey Borth.

“I just thought it’d be a fun thing to try,” Terri Borth whimpers through tears.

“The sea got the better of us,” Dewey Borth says, still not turning from the window.

***

This isn’t the first time I’ve had to play marriage counselor for my passengers. When a marriage takes to the ocean, the rules change. For many, the rules fall away altogether, shoved overboard to be forgotten on the sea floor.

International waters and whatnot.

A few days on the ocean and couples begin to feel like the conventions of dry land don’t apply anymore. They find themselves sharing dinner tables with other married couples, bumping into those same couples at the nightclub, drinking with them poolside, people who also have families, husbands and wives who also have everything to lose.

Husbands and wives from a whole other part of the country.

They don’t all work at the same company. They’re not going to bump into each other at the supermarket. No chance of a scene being made at a neighborhood barbecue.

No strings. Just a handful of married people crossing the ocean, interested in a little variety. If everyone involved made the same promise to be true, and everyone involved is in agreement to put that promise on hold, just for a night, where’s the harm?

They get their answer the morning after. Or sometimes they don’t wait until morning. A husband will pull out of another man’s wife and burst through the cabin door to yank that other husband out of his own. There are some feelings even the sea can’t drown. Jealousy. Inadequacy. Fear of no longer being necessary to the only one you’re supposed to feel necessary to.

I encourage it. All of it. The sexual experimentation. The reprisals that inevitably follow. It’s all part of the game of maritime marital relations.

Once the punches are thrown and the tears pour forth, my ship officers know to bring the couples to my room so I can help them sort things out.

***

“Mr. Borth,” I say to his back. “May I kiss your wife?”

That gets him to turn around. It puts a stop to the crying too, not to mention Roger Kipperson’s endless pacing.

“Just a small one,” I say to Terri. “Come here. I would like a kiss from you, Mrs. Borth. Or have you never kissed a woman before?”

Terri’s smile indicates this isn’t her first rodeo. She looks to Dewey who nods just so. She gets up and sits beside me on my bed. She holds still while I lean in and kiss those lips her husband so selfishly refuses to share.

“Now Terri,” I say to her as her cheeks flush with pink. “Would you mind if I gave your husband a kiss?”

I cross the room, put my arms around Dewey Borth’s neck and my mouth on Dewey Borth’s mouth. I accept his tongue across my lips. Soon I feel Terri’s hands on my back, her mouth on mine, mine on Dewey’s.

I retreat from the two of them and, this time without asking, I kiss Pam Kipperson, her filmy sundress providing just a whisper of fabric between her skin and my hands. Roger Kipperson actually pulls Pam away to kiss me on his own.

I circulate through the room. Kissing Terri, caressing Roger, groping Pam, being groped by Dewey.

Soon Dewey is kissing Pam, Roger groping Terri, Roger’s hand on Dewey, Dewey and Roger sharing Pam, Pam and Teri sharing me.

I extricate myself, watching from my desk chair, the two married couples finding their marital bonds as formidable as the sea, but also as boundless.

I close the door softly when I step out into the hall, not that they would have heard me over sound of their own moaning. I can still hear them when I reach the door to the upper deck.

I spend the night on a deck chair, exhausted.

“How much do you have left to give?” I ask myself, hearing my voice bounce against the night sky. “These passengers are killing you, girl.”

I know it, and I can’t help it. It’s physically exhausting to hand myself over, body and soul, to my passengers like this. But if I’m going to wear my Captain’s hat, I’m going to serve my Captain’s duty.

Besides, I’ve been getting a strange feeling ever since we shoved off. Something tells me this might turn out to be my very last cruise.