3. Her First Cruise Ship #3
The woman fumbled with her tiny purse, struggling with the zipper.
When she finally zipped it open, it tore away a length of skin across her index finger, the flesh pale and jellyfish-like in the store’s unrelentingly bright lights.
No blood rose to the surface, Ileana noticed, which was both a relief and terribly disturbing.
Then the woman pulled out an Amex Black card and, fumbling, tried over and over to get the machine to read it, with only its angry beep in response.
The woman grunted, then held the card out for Ileana, the strip of skin hanging off the card’s shiny surface.
Ileana hesitated, her throat tightening and vomit pushing against her gullet.
She swallowed hard and took the card, attempting to avoid touching the woman without looking like she was attempting to avoid touching her.
When she turned around toward the machine, she tried to discreetly shake the gelatinous skin off the card.
It took a few tries, and she gagged a bit as it thwapped wetly onto the pile of paper bags behind the register.
She ran the card through, tore the receipt off unevenly, and handed both back.
“Thank you for shopping at Artisan Puerto Rico. Please… come again.” She forced a smile that was also probably more of a grimace, and the woman stumbled away, flipping the shopping bag over her peeling arm.
Her Gucci flip-flops were twisted, their bottoms flailing back and forth, the toe posts straining to hold on.
Ileana looked around and saw Carmen patiently holding a man’s bag while he tried to pop his dislocated arm back into its socket.
Sol was calmly ringing up a thousand-dollar order for a white-haired, thin elderly woman who howled continuously through her toothless mouth, holding her loose linen skirt on with one hand and slapping the counter impatiently with the other.
“I’m in hell. For real,” Ileana said to nobody as another moaning customer stepped up smelling like coconut and… hamster cage.
This went on for what seemed like days but was only a few hours—a blur of transactions with what the day before she would have considered monsters.
However, none of her coworkers seemed the least disturbed.
About halfway through her shift, there was a loud commotion outside.
Ileana had no customers in that moment, so she ran to the front of the store and peered out the large window to see what was going on.
A group of cruise passengers mobbed the cosmetics store next door, their manner agitated.
They shifted as one out into the middle of the cobblestone street, and Ileana could see they were carrying something on their shoulders.
It was then she heard David’s voice, shrieking, “Okay! I’ll throw in the eye cream…
for an extra sixty dollars!” But the words devolved into a piercing scream as the mob yanked and pulled back and forth on his limbs.
The group closest to the store tugged hardest, until his left leg ripped free, blood splattering across the window right in front of Ileana’s face.
She screamed and jumped back. Silence fell over the store behind her, and she slapped her hand over her mouth.
Shit! Ever so slowly, she turned around to find every eye staring at her, staff and cruise passenger alike.
She paused, the urgency of the immediate threat overpowering the image of David being torn apart.
Ileana took her hand away from her mouth and forced a nervous giggle, though it came out a bit strangled and panicked.
She waved at them flightily. “Sorry! Uh, I just saw that the”—spinning around, the nearby display of ceramic tiles caught her eye, and she pointed at them—“that the decorative tiles are on sale!”
A pause.
I’m dead, she thought.
Then, everyone in the nearest group of customers lurched toward her, and she choked back a shriek of terror, until she realized they were descending on the trivets as if they were starving and the tiles were the last steak at the buffet.
There was a struggle, before one woman took her wooden souvenir machete with inlaid mosaic glass and shoved its dull tip into a man’s stomach, over and over.
Afterward, she grabbed the hibiscus flower tile from the victim’s hands and stepped away, slipping on his intestines that were now spilling out onto the floor.
Holy. Shit.
The adrenaline was roaring through Ileana’s body, but she forced herself to stay still.
After a few minutes, and ever so slowly, she extricated herself, stepping back as the cruise passengers growled at each other, occasionally holding up a hard-won square of ceramic and moaning in triumph.
When she felt her back hit the counter, her shoulders slumped with relief and tears sprang to her eyes.
“Nice save, chica,” Carmen whispered from behind the register.
Ileana wanted to whip around and scream at Carmen, demand to know what the fuck was going on, but she was beyond bone-tired.
Not to mention she had no desire to draw any further attention to herself while this ship was in port.
Instead, she just nodded, then straightened her skirt and made her way back around the counter.
The image of David’s body being pulled apart seemed to be permanently tattooed inside her eyelids, and she could still hear the echo of his dying screams. But she shored her shoulders and kept going.
What else could she do? To go home she’d have to pass through so many streets of those…
things. You worked at the mall on black Friday, you can certainly handle this, but even as she said this to herself, she knew how ridiculous it was.
No one was tearing someone else limb from limb over a discount on a flat-screen TV. At least, not during her shift.
Eventually, the last of the cruise passengers took their bags of purchases and stumbled out onto the sidewalk, blinking in the bright afternoon sun as they slowly made their way back down the hill to the docks.
Ileana’s knees gave out, and she slunk down in the corner behind the register next to the cleaning supplies. She stared off blankly, her heart gradually slowing from a gallop to a trot.
Carmen yelled across the store, “Nice job, everyone! That was the only boat coming in today.”
Ileana could hear choruses of “Thank God” in Spanish and exhausted laughter.
Deep breath in, and out…
“You okay, mija?”
Ileana jumped at the face that peered over the counter. But it was just the manager.
She opened and closed her mouth like a guppy, trying to moisten her dried-out tongue. She wasn’t sure, but she thought she might have a spray of blood or intestinal fluid on her face from the tile fiasco. “I think I’m okay?”
“Good!”
Sol’s grinning face appeared next to Carmen’s. “Girl handled her first cruise ship like a champ! Let’s hear it for the new girl!” they yelled out, and the other staff whistled and shouted their own words of support.
Sol held their hand out to Ileana. “Honey, hand me the Windex, if you please.” They turned to Carmen with a roll of their eyes. “The fuckers got blood on the front window again.”
Still dazed, Ileana handed them the bright blue cleaner and a roll of paper towels, and they were gone.
The front window…
That’s when Ileana remembered the handsome face contorted, his usually smiling eyes huge and full of abject terror. “D-David! They… they tore him…” But she couldn’t finish; her thoughts were awash in his blood.
Carmen leaned her back on the counter, folding her arms across her ample chest. “Yes, that was sad. He didn’t deserve that.
But it doesn’t happen all that often, and only at that store.
The staff get greedy and try to take advantage of the cruise passengers.
” She glanced down at Ileana. “Sweetie, that was one of the reasons I told you to stay away from him. There’s a revolving door of pretty salespeople, and every few months, one of them gets it.
” She patted Ileana’s hand. “So, it’s better not to get attached to any of them. ”
This was just not making any sense. “You mean to tell me you’ve never lost anyone here? In this store?”
Carmen waved her fingers in dismissal. “No! Of course not!”
Ileana let out a long breath. At least that was some relief…
“Well, unless you count Armando.”
She was afraid to ask. “Armando?”
“Oh, I should never have hired him. Bit of a player type from Bayamón, ?tú sabes? Tried to get some extra money out of a skeletal Texas woman with big breast implants.”
Ileana swallowed. “What happened to him?”
Carmen’s eyes looked far away as she remembered. “The woman kind of… ripped his tongue out. Then the mob finished him off.”
“Ripped his tongue?” Ileana’s stomach was somersaulting.
“Yeah, it was a shame.” Carmen shuddered. Then she stood up straight, shook it off, and grabbed a mop and bucket. She yelled back into the store, “Good work, everyone! This afternoon should be nice and quiet—we earned it.”