3. The Stars Were Thunderous

                                              THE STARS WERE THUNDEROUS
     

     “Hi! My name’s Bob and this is my wife, Sally. Where are you from?”

     Dan was staring at an open hand extended across the table. He took it. “The last place was San Francisco. My name is Dan. It’s a pleasure to meet you both.”
     Bob stroked his immaculate goatee. “No kidding! We’re from Los Altos. This ship is full of Americans.”

     Sally offered Dan her hand. She was a big woman, once voluptuous and still comfortable with herself. “We love San Francisco. We’re always up for the Opera or the Symphony and we have season tickets for the Giants. We have a place in Tahoe and a winter home in Sedona. Have you been to Greece before?”
     Dan smiled and took her hand. “A long time ago when I was young during my wine and roses days.”
     “Jack Lemmon and Lee Remick! I loved that film!”, laughed Sally.
     “And I love to drink.”, Dan sighed, lifting the glass he’d carried in from the bar. “Cheers.”
     “Here’s to new friends!”, boomed Bob.
     Sally picked up the menu. “My goodness. All these dishes have the longest names. Each one is a mouth full. I’m beginning to feel full already. You must have been impressed with Greece if you’ve come back for more, Dan. I’ve never been here. You know, democracy was invented here and somehow it feels patriotic as a citizen of the greatest democracy in the world, a country that shines democracy like a beacon into the dark, oppressed, undemocratic shadows of the world to visit the place where democracy was born.”
     “I’ve never heard the word democracy used so many times in one sentence before.”

     “Well it’s true isn’t it?”, demanded Sally. “Of course, Greek women and slaves couldn’t vote.”
     Dan shook his head. “Thank God for Abraham Lincoln, Sojourner Truth, Susan B. Anthony and Martin Luther King.”
     “Sojourner who?”, asked Bob.
     A proud smile spread across Sally’s face. “You know, Dan, we were just up in San Francisco at a wonderful fundraiser for President Obama.”
     Dan offered a pained smile. “Good for you.” He looked around the dining room wondering if the sexy bitch would make an appearance.
     “We just love President Obama.”, Sally said reverently. “I cried at his inaugural.” She flapped her hands and rolled her eyes in not so feigned abandonment. 

     Dan noticed a huge diamond on her wedding ring as she stroked a large string of pearls around her neck.  “I shed a few tears myself until I found out he had chosen a megalomaniacal, homophobe to give the invocation.” He smiled and finished his drink with one swallow.
     Bob grinned after giving Dan a searching look. “You know, Sally, I’m with Dan on this one. That preacher was a big supporter of that anti-gay marriage measure.”
     Sally looked confused for a moment then collected herself. “I completely understand, Dan. It hadn’t occurred to me that that would have been an insult to you people but President Obama has to include all his fellow citizens.” She offered a winning smile.
     “Sally, my dear, I don’t think Dan here is gay!”, announced Bob almost too loudly.
“Not that it would matter one way or another.” He cleared his throat. “It’s just that I happen to have seen Dan here with a sultry vixen having more than just a little tete a tete in a cafe in Patmos yesterday.”
     The dining room was warm. Dan loosened his tie. “We were talking politics.”
     Sally was generous. “Everyone’s talking politics these days or should I say, everyone’s screaming politics these days. Why can’t people be civil? We’re all Americans. We all have a right to speak our minds and be respected for our opinions. Doesn’t your girlfriend like President Obama?”
     Dan was beginning to sweat. “His name didn’t come up.” He pulled open his tie and opened his shirt.
     “Well, something must have come up, buddy! Look at that hickey on your neck!”, roared Bob.
     “Well, would you look at him blush!”, giggled Sally. “Don’t be embarrassed, honey. You’re never too old for a hickey. Why it’s been just about forever since I’ve had one.”
     Bob jumped in his seat. “Ouch! Sally! You don’t have to kick me. Hell, if you want one that bad we can take care of things right at the table!”
     “Stop it!”, screeched Sally as she let loose peals of laughter and tossed Dan a flirtatious glance. “What other battle scars do you have, sweety, a couple of scratches on your back?” A waiter approached and she put her hand over her mouth trying to stifle bursts of giggles breaking through her fingers.

     Dan leaned back in his chair and suddenly shifted his weight as the rail pressed into his wounds.
     Sally was beside herself. “You devil, you!  Bob, in honor of our new friend Dan, I think we should have a bottle of wine with dinner tonight.” She looked up at the waiter. “What is Moussaka?”
     “Aubergine, basil, lamb.”, grunted the waiter.
     Sally’s eyes crossed slightly. “Aubergine? What in the world is that?”
     “Eggplant.”, sighed Dan. “It’s a casserole. Try it. You’ll like it.”
     “Oh look!”, exclaimed Bob. “They have calamari. I love that.”
     Dan looked up from the menu. “I’ll have the arni limonato me patates, please and bring us a bottle of Boutari Santorini.”
     “Well someone certainly doesn’t have trouble with all those vowels and consonants.”, sniffed Sally. “Santorini? That sounds Italian.”
     “It’s an island.”, said Dan. “We’re going there. Thirty-five hundred years ago it blew up and destroyed western civilization.”
     Dinner proceeded on a quieter note. Dan heard about his dining companions' three grown children, about grandchildren, about their home, and their other homes. He offered back a few bits and pieces about himself, some true, some not so. Just as he began to feel relieved that politics had been forgotten, they came up again.
     Sally was shaking salt on her Moussaka when a sudden thought lit up her eyes. “The strangest thing happened at that fundraiser for President Obama I was telling you about. All of a sudden, a bunch of women in the audience started singing about that traitor queer - uh gay soldier who gave away all those top secrets to that internet muckraker group. What’s his name, Bob?” 
     “His name is Bradley Manning.”, sighed Dan.
     Sally squeezed the saltshaker and gave him a concerned look. “That’s it! And President Obama told them what for. He told them that when you break the law, you pay the price, or something like that.”
     “He said Bradley Manning broke the law?”, asked Dan.
     “No question there.”, said Bob over a mouth full of calamari.
     “No question there?”, Dan snorted. “He hasn’t even been put on trial. He has been rotting away in solitary confinement for months in a tiny six by eight-foot cell. He is forced to strip naked every night, not allowed sheets or a pillow, only allowed out one hour out of twenty-four to walk around in figure eights while shackled. That kind of treatment resulted in the right to a speedy trial guaranteed by the sixth amendment, not that he ever will have a fair trial with the President of the United States claiming he is guilty before being proven innocent.”
     “You approve of what this guy did?”, choked Bob.
     “I think he’s a hero.”, Dan said calmly as he lifted a fork full of lamb to his mouth.
     “A hero?”, gasped Sally. “For giving top secrets to the enemy?”
     “The files were marked secret and confidential. They did not damage the United States, they embarrassed it. They were diplomatic cables, cables about American Corporations, reports and video of American war crimes in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, information about how the First World is raping the Third World, and the ‘enemy’ he gave them to was the New York Times. When a soldier of any rank in the United States military is witness to American war crimes, it is his duty to report them. Your wonderful President Obama despises whistle blowers and embraces the Security State.  He has extended the Patriot Act, virtually pardoned the Bush Administration and then there’s that pesky Guantanamo. For God’s sake, it’s 2011. Haven’t you figured things out yet?”
     “That’s not his fault!”, pleaded Sally, her tone moving from sincere to angry. “The Republicans wouldn’t let him close it!”
     The wine had got to Sally’s head and Dan realized that the scotch had got to him. “Forgive me.”
     “You spout off all these facts or somebody’s facts and attack this grand, noble man.”, Sally pouted.
     Bob put an arm around his wife. “Now, honey, you brought it up.”
    Dan tried pathos. “I feel betrayed, that’s all. I feel I’ve been taken for a ride and it's infuriating.”
     “Taken for a ride?”, moaned Sally. “He has given us Universal Health Care. They’ve been trying to get that for sixty years!”
     Dan couldn’t stop himself. “Forcing every American into the jaws of the parasitic Health Care Industry is hardly Universal Health Care. When the bill passed, the industry’s stocks went through the roof and why shouldn’t they? The industry wrote the bill.”
     Silence reigned supreme for a moment then Sally exploded. “You hate our President! Is it because he is black? You right wingers hate President Obama!”
     “Whether he is a puppet of Corporate America, or a willing participant or even if he was sat down in the oval office his first day and told that if he loved his wife and children, he better play along, he still filled his administration with corporate lobbyists. We’re screwed, Sally.”
     Bob put his hands up. “Things aren’t that bad, Dan. The Stock Market is way up.”
     “Do you know what would happen to this country if a Republican was elected President?”, Sally asked. “Do you see what those republicans are doing in states around the country?”
     Dan shook his head and sighed. “But that’s the whole dog and pony show, Sally. The republicans scare the hell out of Americans by threatening to destroy democracy immediately so we vote for a democrat who will do the same only slower, more subtly, under the radar and much, much more effectively. Don’t you get it? There’s no difference between the two. Any difference is manufactured to keep us yelling at each other, to distract us from their agenda of handing over the country to their corporate masters."
     “Where did you get all this nonsense?”, demanded Sally. “I have had just about enough of you! What are you, Tea Party? Green Party? Crazy Party?” She stood up and looked down at him in a rage.
     Dan caught the red flame of Lucia's hair out of the corner of his eye. Her appearance quieted the din of the dining room. Heads turned. Dan’s head turned. Their eyes met. She stomped toward him like a storm trooper. Bob and Sally’s mouths dropped open. Sally sat down. Suddenly Lucia was standing over them. She was regal. She was divine. She was satanic. She glanced scornfully at Bob and Sally. She bent down and caressed Dan’s face.  She ran her fingers through his hair before grabbing bunches of it in her fists. A moan escaped her. She kissed him. She grasped his hand and pulled him to his feet.
      He loped behind her as she dragged him out of the dining room. She burst through the double doors, marched through the lobby and out a door to the deck. There was no moon in the night sky and the stars were thunderous. She grabbed the rail and gulped in the salt air. Her back was toward him as she stared silently at the black sea. The only sound was the rush of the waves against the ship.
     Then she whirled around. “All day?”, she shot. “All day and all evening? Was that it? One night? Do I look like a whore to you? DO I?  I have never in my life done what I did with you! I don’t care who you are or what you think! I want you! I thought you wanted me!”      

     For a moment Dan stood mute before her. Her rage stunned him. Her rage overwhelmed him. “I want you right now, right here, not in my cabin, not in your suite, right here.”, he blurted.

     He threw his arms around her. They kissed each other frantically. They rolled along the rail burning in each other’s arms. They washed up under a lifeboat. She looked up at it and back into Dan’s eyes. They both tore at the knotted ropes tying down its cover. She stepped up on the rail and dove into the boat. Dan dove in after her.